State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP): An Overview

Q: How much additional money, on top of the $5 billion-a-year baseline funding, is needed to preserve the same size program over the next five years?

A: Keeping the program at current levels would require expanding funding by about $13.4 billion over five years, for total funding of $38.4 billion between 2008 to 2012, according to a CBO report in May. Part of the reason is rising medical costs. President Bush has proposed a $5 billion expansion, for total program funding of $30 billion over the next five years. He has said he might be willing to go higher. The bill Bush vetoed would increase funding by $35 billion over the five years, for a program total of $60 billion. Ultimately, it would cover 10 million people.

Q: What about adults?

A: About 671,000 adults were enrolled in SCHIP in 2006, according to the CBO.

Under the bill, states would have to transition childless adults to Medicaid. The 11 states that cover parents on their SCHIP programs could continue to do so for two or three more years. After that, those states could continue covering parents only if the states first meet certain benchmarks for covering children. No other states could decide to start covering parents. Pregnant women would remain eligible for coverage.

Q: Does the bill cover children from families earning as much as $83,000 a year, as President Bush contends?

A: No. New York recently asked the Department of Health and Human Services for permission to cover children from families earning as much as 400 percent of poverty -- $82,600 for a family of four. But HHS turned New York down. The White House argues that a future administration could grant the request if New York asks again.

Q. How many children are uninsured in America ?

A: There are about 9.4 million uninsured children age 18 and under, according to Census data.

Sources: Congressional Budget Office, Congressional Research Service, The Urban Institute, congressional aides.